


Shattered Reality: The Breakout

by crossoverAUman



Series: Darkwolf-verse [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Cannibalism, Collars, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mirror Universe, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22770811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossoverAUman/pseuds/crossoverAUman
Summary: A Mirror can be shattered, and our expectations can be used against us. In a world so familiar but so strange, The Teen Titans find a new ally waiting for them.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Garfield Logan/Tara Markov, Raven/OC
Series: Darkwolf-verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637137
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> So this is... ok I'll admit it, this is a weird one. Years ago I came up with an OC and to this day I love him. But I've never successfully written anything with him in it.  
> Then the other day I reread an old favorite on ffn, and it gave me the spark I needed to get this out. It'll only be 3 chapters, but I intend to come back to the universe established here fairly often, with luck.

Terra sat in her cell, lazily picking at the Suppressant Collar around her neck with a worn down fingernail. Her knees were to her chest, back up against the padding of her cell. Jump City Sanitorium was no Arkham, and she was no Batman, but she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The slot at the bottom of her door slid open, a tray passing through with the usual boring food. A dry sandwich on dry, crumbly bread barely worth its yeast, jello that was neither jell nor o, and a cup of what might have been kool-aid before it was watered down by the piss of the kitchen staff. Same thing every meal, every day of the week, for…

She looked down and counted the scratches on her arm. 

Three weeks? Really only that long? 

Terra groaned, reaching out across the cell to grab it, pulling it close. There was something… off, about this traytoday. Eating mechanically, she pulled the items off the tray and flipped it over, examining it closely. Nothing on the bottom…

Shoving the last of the sandwich into her mouth, Terra spooned the jello into her mouth with her fingers, using her feet to examine the plastic. Something was off about the tray, and she knew it. Just had to find out _what_...

Downing her drink in one gulp, she examined each of the dishes individually and realized one thing. They weren't plastic, they were carefully painted ceramic- and the cup for the jello was hollow, with something rattling about in it. Preparing to bleed, she smashed the cup into the hardest thing in the room, shattering it and the tray alike.

But in the shards sat one very useful item- a singular, lonely paperclip, and a little note. 

"You're beautiful," she grinned, scooping up the clip and giving it a little smooch, wiping her bloodied hand against her thigh. A little pain was nothing, not to this. 

And the note? 'Come join us when you're ready, babe. Love Gar'. It was one of the sweetest things her lover had ever said. 

“Not a very high bar, to be fair…” Terra mumbled to herself, amused by the thought. She and Gar weren’t much for gushy, sugary-sweet words anyways. Actions were the loudest thing anyone could say, after all, and both of them knew that all too well.

Unbending the paperclip, she jimmied it into the keyhole on her collar, and after a few seconds, felt a satisfying _click_ as it popped open. There was a brief feeling of nausea and something like vertigo as her powers came back to her, eyes flaring gold as her hair began to float.   
“Yeeessss,” she hissed, nearly moaning in relief, reaching out to the broken ceramic and feeling it lift, circling under her palm. “Terra’s back in the game, baby!”

She stood, flipping the ceramic around in her hand, squeezing it together into a blade. It was a bit thin, but it would do to get the door open, wouldn’t it? Forcing it through the padding of the cell, she grinned in a rather manic fashion as the nylon ripped, and the metal of the door gave way as she wedged her way free. Outside was chaos, her fellow inmates running wild, guards and orderlies desperately trying to maintain some semblance of order and control. Beyond that, though, she could feel _him_ , deep in her soul, and she followed the worst of the screaming. Sure enough, there he was, emerald fur flowing as he clamped the bone-breaking jaws of the Spotted Hyena over the head of an orderly with a cackle.

“Beast Boy!” she called, and cruel jade eyes flashed at her, only to soften instantly as he transformed back into himself, throwing himself at her. He landed in her arms, pulling her to his chest, and she dropped the ceramic blade she’d formed as they embraced. She felt the last three weeks melt away at his touch, and tears began to well up in her eyes. “You came back for me!”

“Of course I came for you!” he said, shocked she would suggest otherwise, as if coming back for her was the most natural thing in the world. She was his mate, his other half! How could he live without her? “You’re Terra, and I’m Beast Boy! We’re a duo! Like Peanut Butter and Jelly! Ribs and Barbeque Sauce! Screaming and crying!”

Then he laughed, kissing her. “Besides, it’s not just me, we all worked on this. Robin’s been working here for a week now, waiting to slip you that tray.”

They both grinned, and then Terra gave into the urge to kiss her lover again, only to pull away a few seconds later.

“ _Please_ tell me you brought my uniform? I have an image to maintain here.”

“Of course!” Beast Boy grinned, reaching around behind him to grab her lucky backpack, making the geomancer grin even wider. She stripped from the boring white scrubbs of the asylum into her uniform, the leather of her jacket cool to the touch but quick to grow warm as she slid it on, pausing only to put on her chest plate and shin-guards. The spikes glistened in the fluorescent lights, and she pulled her goggles down before slipping on her jeans and steel-toed boots. Flexing her fingers, she grinned at her companion.

“I have a present for the team,” she hinted, taking his hand and leading him from the room, the two of them laughing as they began to run down the halls, twisting and turning, killing any and everyone they came across. 

She giggled uncharacteristically as they approached the door of the cell she’d been leading him to. It was completely silent- too silent, in the classic stereotype of quietly creepy things. The door was the most heavily guarded in the place, in drone guards from Wilsontech and the sheer number of locks of all different kinds.

“BB, this… Is The Darkwolf. Nobody wanted to talk about him, but everyone had something to say. He got out once, just once, and killed every guard and orderly and doctor in the place when he was _ten_. Then he crawled back into his cell and said he was still waiting. He was ‘too early’. They increased the security on him after that."

"Ok that's… Pretty badass," Garfield admitted, nodding his head as his girlfriend talked. "But what good does that do us? Why would he want on the team?"

Terra smirked, and moved forward, the drones ignoring her. They were only programmed for one target, after all. 

She pressed the intercom, allowing them to hear inside the cell. Shuffling sounds, beastial growls, and one word on loop from the prisoner's throat. 

"Titans"

Beast Boy let himself grin at the word, turning back to Terra to kiss her once again. 

"Baby, you're brilliant. Let's see what the others think of our little fanboy."

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Quiet. Always quiet as I wait. I don't care, I know my purpose. I know what I was made for. I know why I was created. The Titans. The Team. My Raven, waiting for me, and ready to command me as an Alpha and Mate should. Noise. Always I can hear when they come closer. Nasty scurrying human rats, barely feeding me and expecting gratitude. I am Darkwolf! I am the Resurrection Hound! Two hearts, beating rapidly. Excitement and speculation and anticipation, not fear. No fear in their hearts, no fear in their voices… maybe now is the time? Is the wait over? Father always said I would be impatient. Father knew me better than I knew myself… they're speaking now, excited, they want others to see me… it must be time. It has to be, I know these voices. These are… the Beast God and the Stone-Witch! I know them, I remember them! And if they are here, my Raven must be here as well! I stand, move to where I know the door is. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. I have. To. Get. Out! My Pack is out there, my Mate and my Friends are waiting for me!_

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I’m voting yes,” Cyborg agreed with a shrug. He didn’t _actively_ care either direction, but it might be an amusing diversion, to have this supposedly monstrous killer on their team. After all, according to society, Robin was completely normal- But it wasn’t the rest of the team who could only get it up after pushing somebody off of a tall building, now was it? Mostrous was all a matter of perspective.

Gar and Terra’s whole canibalism thing was just fucking weird, to be fair.

“He is so dangerous that he must be restrained behind an army. What if we cannot control his might?” Starfire questioned. It was a fair question, and worth the asking. They could all agree that letting the genie out of the bottle, so to speak, could be a dangerous sort of thing to do. Nevermind they were some of the most powerful beings on the planet, there was always someone or some _thing_ more powerful than you, and you never went into a fight un-or-under-prepared. They all knew that from experience.

“What if we can?” Raven counterpointed. “After all, he obviously wants to meet us.”

To drive the point home, Terra activated the intercom once again, and this time, a second word could be heard- ‘Raven’, over and over as he punched the walls.

“Oh, now I _have_ to have him,” Raven smirked. “He’s calling for me, after all. I like it when my pets call out my name.”

That was… a little creepy. Even the other Titans, who were like family to Raven, didn’t trust her when she got horny. Demonic Lusts were hard to slake, and harder to survive the slaking of. And by that particular tone, Raven was ready to at least play with this ‘Darkwolf’, whoever he was, until he regretted it.

Robin finally looked up, motioning to the door.

“Open it. Let him get our scent. If he can find us afterwards, he deserves to join the team. He’ll have to get past the drones if he wants to join up.”

Well, that solved it. Robin was in charge. They’d all agreed to that early on, for various reasons. They’d voted on it, fair and square, names in a hat and typed out on little slips of paper, drawn by a random abduction victim (before they’d let him go, as agreed. They liked to keep things interesting, after all); and Robin’s word was law, at the end of the day.

Cyborg moved forward, his sonic cannon activating with a hum and a whirring sound as he moved, his wing pack hitched up high as he took aim. He fired at the door, and it barely smoked as he pulled back. He looked down at his arm, frowning, then fired again. This time, the door began to melt, smoking up the hallway as it did, but the team wanted to see it through.

There was a low hissing sound as the metal of the door began to drip onto the ground in little droplets of molten slag, until there was a loud shrieking sound, like a mountain lion in pain, before the door was ripped _inwards_ and tossed away. Through the smoke, they caught sight of a massive form, nearly eight feet at the shoulders, eyes glowing at the drones before they began to fire upon the whatever it was.

Raven dropped a piece of her cloak onto the ground, tearing it off as a little clue- Robin’s word was law, but since when were demons good at obeying laws?- and then she teleported her teammates away and into the massive sewer complex they called home.

“Alright, everyone into Civvies. We’re going out for Pizza to celebrate Terra’s recent parole!” Robin declared, getting a cheer. “Last one out pays!”

Well, that was going to really be a contest then, wasn’t it? Cyborg would just activate his holograms, and Terra could just ditch the jacket and chest plate, switching it out for a sweatshirt and calling it good. As long as Starfire ditched her spear and her crown, she could just pull her hair back and be mistaken for any other random, somewhat ditzy teen girl on the planet.

It would, in the end, come down to Robin, Raven, and Beast Boy. Raven could teleport, Robin was trained in all forms of stage magic, and… Beast Boy was green. His options were limited for the whole ‘out in public’ thing.

Still, five years with the Doom Patrol had taught him plenty about “dressing up”, and as the three rushed to their rooms, he was already hard at work, pulling off his uniform and tossing it onto the bed, pausing only to smile at a picture of his parents on his night stand. Never mind his birth family. They’d given him his powers, certainly, and he was happy to have them, but they’d held him back from the day he woke up green to the day they’d gone over a waterfall and he’d woken up in the home of his soon to be foster father. Five years living with the tribe had given him control of his powers. Five years with the Patrol had given him control of how they showed, thanks to extensive practice.

Gloves, sweatshirt, sunglasses, a blonde wig (he hated how he looked blonde, how it made him look like Mark Logan, but thanks to Terra, the color had grown on him; and he could admit that he hated having other hair colors just as much); force his teeth to shrink a little, sit a little lower in his mouth, only speak Swahili unless absolutely necessary, he’d blend right in. Mostly.

Maybe he’d stick to German. Or Esperanto. His Esperanto was getting a little rusty, these days, and he could at least talk to the others with it. Swahili, and the only ones who’d understand him would be Terra and Raven.

He ran back out, grinning at the fact that Raven hadn’t arrived yet.

Probably still in her room trying to choose which choker she’d be wearing. It was one of her few vanities, so he wouldn’t tease, and since it meant she’d have to pay, he wouldn’t complain.

Two minutes later, Raven was back, in a leather jacket and black jeans that looked painted on, they were so tight. It was black, all black, except for the purple eye shadow and lipstick that would have been tacky if she wasn’t literally gray.

“Raven gets to pay!” Cyborg called, getting a cheer from the whole team, except Raven, who merely rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go,” she groused, teleporting them to their favorite pizza joint, where they proceeded to eat as only a group of superhuman (or alien) teens could. It would be a rather enormous bill, and while the proprietor knew they weren’t exactly law abiding teenagers, he was a simple sort of man. Yeah, maybe the Teen Titans were a bunch of murderous monsters, but when they came into his joint, they were respectful, high paying customers. That could get you pretty far with a business, especially a restaurant.

When they returned home, after, they could immediately tell something was… off. It was eerily quiet. That sort of quiet that promised you there was something hunting you when you went camping. The quiet that said you weren’t alone, even if you were. The ‘humans can lick too’ kind of quiet that made your skin start to crawl if you tried to ignore it. 

And then it broke, the fridge opening behind the counter, filling the room with light, exposing a shadowy figure. He was muscular, and mostly nude, mindlessly scratching his ass as he rooted about the fridge.

“Well, well, well. Look who followed us home.” Raven smirked.


	2. Introductions

"Titans!” the figure barked, turning away from the food and leaping over the counter in one fluid motion, padding over to them on all fours, settling onto his bottom, knees to his shoulders in front of Raven, grinning up at them all like a looney-bin escapee (which, to be fair, he technically was. “My Titans!”

Beast Boy looked at the boy, who, he noticed, had a rather fluffy tail, and canine ears atop his head; with a crackling of bone, he was a wolf, nose to nose with the boy, who nuzzled him affectionately.

-Know us?- Beast Boy asked softly, curious. All canines shared a language, after all, and it certainly sounded like this mysterious fellow could speak it.

-Father know you!- the boy explained, getting up and bouncing about, falling into a play bow. Beast Boy couldn’t help himself, then. He _had_ to play, something in him was saying, and he began to bounce too, the two wrestling together on the floor. -Father say ‘Titans come. I go, but Titans come. You will be Titan, Raven is your reason to Be,Derek’, he tell me before he go!-

Which explained basically nothing, but at least gave them a starting point, he supposed. He said as much when he shifted back, catching their guest in his arms, setting him on the back of the couch like a cat. He proceeded to rub against Raven's hand when she reached out to touch him, and to the shock of the others, she smiled. 

"You _said_ he could stay, if he could find us." She reminded Robin, who eyed their guest (new teammate?) warily.

"I didn't think he'd be able to…" the boy mused quietly, almost to himself, before grabbing the boy by the chin and meeting his eyes. There was a silent exchange, but when their new team pet looked down in submission, he was released, a gloved hand ruffling his hair gently. 

"He can stay. He earned that much, but you wanted him so bad, he can be _your_ problem, Rae." He declared firmly. "The minute he becomes a liability, he goes."

Which the entire team knew was bullshit. After all, they'd all been a liability at one point, and they'd all come together for one another. Once you were a Titan, you were a Titan, and that was the end of it. As long as their new pup learned that lesson quickly, he'd have a home for life. 

"Mmm, alright with me…" the half-demon smirked, scratching the boy under the chin, making him close his eyes in contentment. "Now let's see… they call you Darkwolf, now where have I heard that before?" She asked him in a rhetoric fashion, giving a huff of laughter as he licked her fingers and palm.

"Alright, come along, pet. We need to get you a uniform, don't we?" She ordered, turning away, the wolf-boy following her. 

"I am the concerned." Starfire admitted, after they were gone. "Friend Raven seems… far too enthralled with this strange wolf."

"Oh come on, he's basically harmless," Beast Boy defended with a shrug before opening the fridge, only to close it a moment later. "I take it back." He squeaked. 

"What is it?" Cyborg asked, rolling an eye and lifting his friend out of the way, opening the fridge, only to gag and immediately shut it. 

"Ok yeah maybe not so harmless." He admitted. 

"Great, what did he do?" Robin questioned, moving to the fridge. He nodded, impressed, but closed the door immediately as well. "Ok, kinda gross, we'll just ignore it for now and steal him a fridge in the morning."

"What did he do?" Terra asked. Anything that could gross out Gar had to be terrible. 

"Babe you remember that time we had you spying on HIVE?"

At Terra's nod, Beast-Boy continued. 

"How uh… how attached to Professor Mumbo Jumbo were you? Cause his face is hanging up in the fridge, and his arms are leaking all over the shelves."

That was… "Ok fair. That's gross. He and Raven are meant for each other, that's for sure."

There was a big difference, they could all agree, between killing someone and eating an organ or two in the heat of battle, and killing them and saving trophies. Raven, at least, kept her trophies in her room, where they didn't have to look at the screaming faces on the peeled off skins. 

"That is the disgusting." Starfire agreed. "We will have to thank him for his contribution, but request he not, in the future."

That decided, the group slowly filed off for the night; Terra curling up against Beast Boy's chest, his chin in her hair, the two finally able to relax.

"No more getting captured, ok?"

"No more getting captured."

And they both drifted off to sleep, in Beast Boy's bed, as they always did. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the eggs cooked on the griddle the next morning, Robin whistled a happy, tuneless whistle to himself, flipping them as needed. He couldn't name the style of egg if his life depended on it, but the Titans all agreed that scrambled or Runny Yolked was basically the only way to eat an egg. And even then, you'd better have it on an English muffin with some meat.

Eggs Benedict was a popular dish in their little family, if you couldn't guess. 

"BB, sausage, steak, bacon or ham?" He heard Cyborg asking from the living room, where they had another griddle set up. That one was a camping style griddle and used gas, however, and stayed out of the kitchen. 

"I think it's a ham morning, dude. Terra is probably gonna want sausage and bacon, though. She was talking about it a little last night."

Shocking, Terra wanting lots of meat. Robin rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling as Starfire pulled the biscuits from the oven and gave the gravy a quick stir. They were celebrating Terra being free _and_ clearing out the fridge in one go. Waste not want not, and all. 

"Cyborg, Gravy is ready!" He called, and after a few seconds, Terra delivered it, yawning. She was dressed in one of Beast Boy's band shirts, and nothing else, but nobody in the base was judging her for that. It was enough of a battle to get Beast Boy clothed that there was no point in arguing about it. 

As they all sat to eat, Raven sauntered out.

"My friends, if I may have your attention for but a moment!" She grinned. 

"Yes, but after this you need to get your pet's trophy out of the fridge." Robin groused, and though Raven raised her brow at the statement, she rolled with it and continued. 

"Last night, we added a new member to the team. After a few hours of research, I discovered who and what he is. Derek is the last of the Darkwolves, from whom all breeds of werewolf are descended in some way, shape, or form. I know, amazing, but it gets better. You see, fifteen years ago, they all disappeared. Poof. A thousand beings of immense power, gone in a flash, defending our world from an army of Planet-Devourers."

That was certainly noteworthy, and now the whole team was giving Raven their attention. 

"Fortunately, they left a piece of themselves behind. And they left their history recorded throughout the world, throughout the ages. I even had one of their fabled swords, which could summon lightning. I no longer have it, but! It has been returned to its rightful owner. May I present to you Derek Michaelson, The Last Darkwolf!"

And from behind her he stepped from the shadows, now on two legs, showing his true height. Nearly seven feet tall, just a few inches less than Cyborg, body rippling with muscles, blonde hair now shaved down into a mohawk, he stood; glaring at the world, a long blade in a sheath on his back, and a solid ring of metal around his neck. Raven reached up and back, rubbing his throat with her palm, making the 'werewolf' close his eyes with a soft, doofy smile. She'd gotten him into a pair of jeans with a hole cut out the back for his tail, which was wagging happily, and a pair of gauntlets were strapped to his forearms.

"Now, let's go kill some people and remind them why catching one of our own is a bad idea." She smirked, and it was a dangerous little grin, for it was infectious. First Terra, then Beast Boy, and soon the whole group was chuckling at the idea of causing a little trouble. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jinx was firing off Hexes as she landed, laying down cover fire for Gizmo and Mammoth. Their Triarch was the closest to the Titans' point of attack, and while back up was on its way, they were under heavy fire. It was five on two, in the favor of the Titans, Mammoth pinned down behind a tractor trailer, his teammates unable to aid him without getting shot at themselves. 

"How long until backup arrives?!" He shouted, lobbing a tire at Robin, though the Titan dodged it. "We need to even the odds!"

"Tell dispatch that, go ahead, Mammoth!" Gizmo snapped. "Go ahead, tell them to hurry it up! They won't listen!"

Jinx rolled her eyes and kept firing, before getting a lucky shot in on the fire hydrant, blasting Cyborg back and seizing up his servos for a moment. It gave her the opportunity she needed to move forward, and Gizmo pounced, firing off a few volleys of Paralytic Beams, catching Robin and Beast Boy. 

That was when the rocks started flying, and Mammoth stood up, deflecting most of them with his fists as Raven went down like a stone from a stray shot by one of the few remaining police officers.

Something… wasn't right here. This was too simple. The Titans never went down this easy. 

"It's a trap!" She found herself yelling as _something_ blurred between the remaining officers, making them drop, puddles of blood already forming.

There was nothing instantly off putting about the boy who did it, though she recognized him from the Escape Bulletin they'd all gotten the night before. You looked at him for just a moment and your eyes would move right past him. But if you focused you could almost taste the predatory malice rolling off him in waves. There was something cruel in his eyes, like looking at Superman. It was the look of pure, top of the food chain confidence. What it was like, to compare him to humanity, was like comparing a snake to a worm. Yes, they looked similar in the most base of ways, but the deeper you looked, the more terrifying differences you'd find.

That's what this was. 

The boy _burst_ forward, tackling Gizmo's spider legs to the ground, pulling them off and kicking the dwarf teen so hard in the chest that he flew back so far, Jinx lost sight of him. She heard someone screaming and realized it was her as her powers shot out, massive waves of destruction striking him, but the murderer only laughed, diverting the energy with a long, katana-esque sword, before jumping again, striking Mammoth on the shoulder.

And Jinx heard something terrifying, in that moment. Mammoth screaming in pain. Mammoth, who was damn near enough to indestructible, was screaming as the boy struck him in the same spot, again and again, with his fingertips. Mammoth, who had shrugged off a strike from Suprema, once, collapsed to his knees in agony.

And then the boy, having pushed Mammoth down, turned to look at her, growling. His face was split in a sadistic grin, and as he advanced upon her, Jinx acted on instinct. Several pieces of rebar, a pipe, and two of Gizmo's Spider-legs flew out, stabbing her opponent and impaling him in a brutal fashion. And still he stood, refusing to fall, still advancing on her, claws glistening with blood, drawing up to cut her down, when

_WHAM!_

A giant blue fist caught him in the side of the head, sending him flying into a car with an unhappy roar. 

"Get the _fuck_ away from her, Poochy!" Adonis snapped, Fang spitting out webbing onto the boy before lowering a very sore, but very much alive, Gizmo to the ground. Kitten slid off her boyfriend's head, landing in a crouch, her wings fluttering. 

"Gizmo! Help Mammoth!" She ordered, relieved beyond measure he was alright, but unable to focus on it until they had won, or retreated. He nodded, rushing to his oldest friend's side, the big guy having stumbled to a safe spot. Safer, at the very least. 

"Giz! You're… fuck, you're ok." He breathed in relief.

"Yeah, sort of. Ungh… he definitely broke a few ribs on me, but you…"

"He… Giz, I'm scared. Nobody has ever hurt me. I came out bulletproof, buddy." He admitted to his friend. "If he were alone we could maybe handle him, but he's with the Titans… What are we supposed to do?"

"Keep fighting." Gizmo winced, peeking around the back of the van they were hiding behind. It had gone quiet, and little wonder. The Titans were gone, having reached their goal of random destructive violence.

Jynks was looking at a body, lying on the street, and even from his hiding spot, Gizmo could see the blood stained blue skin of Mumbo Jumbo. The Professor had gone after the escapee the night before and never come back. Now they knew why. The HIVE students gathered together around the corpse, all six respectfully somber.

"This is something beyond us…" Jinx mumbled. "The Headmaster needs to be told about this."

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shadowed figure set his phone down, rubbing his temples before standing up, walking to his liquer cabinet and selecting a bottle of scotch. For a brief moment he considered a glass, before simply chugging the booze directly out of the bottle. When it was empty, he flung it against the wall with a wordless scream of rage before sweeping his arm across the mini bar, sending glasses and bottles flying across the room. He was enraged to a point he'd never been before, at least not since Joseph had...

"FUCK!" He snapped, slamming his fists down. "FUCK, FUCK, FUCKING FUCK!"

Sitting on his desk, the man snapped his phone up and quickly dialed in the number of an ally he'd hoped to never have to call. When they answered, no pleasantries were exchanged, merely two simple words. 

"He's escaped."

"He had help, I presume?"

"The Titans found him. By accident, if you can believe that. They let him go and now he's with them. For all the good his progenitors did when they died, he cannot be allowed to run wild."

"Agreed. Plan Alpha has failed. Now we use Plan Beta."

The call ended with a click, and the man set his phone back on his desk gently. Moving slowly, he removed a painting, one his Rosie had painted him years back, from the wall, revealing a safe. 

6, 8, 11, and with a clack the safe opened, revealing a body suit, neatly folded, two katana, and an orange and black mask with one eye. 

"Hello, old friend…" he muttered, picking up the mask with gentle hands. "I'd hoped to never see you again."


	3. Chapter 3

"Maaa-maaa! Can you say Mama? Go on, you can do it!"

Derek sat on his haunches, watching Raven, head tilted in curiosity; the other Titans merely sat, watching her make a fool of herself trying to get the proto-werewolf to speak. It would be hilarious, if it wasn't terrifying. Raven didn't do the whole 'baby-talk' thing, and that was a fact; but here she was, doing baby-talk and trying to get a feral man-child to call her Mama. 

"Meh!" Derek barked, which was more progress than he'd made in the last hour. Raven rolled her eyes, letting him snatch a piece of jerky from her fingers before giving the order again. 

"Mama. Say Mama, go ahead…" she encouraged, and the whole group leaned forward in their seats, now fully invested in these escapades. Derek opened his mouth, and everyone held their breath, clutching the arms of their chairs; or, as was for Beast-Boy, his knees. 

"Mmmmmm…" he hummed, seeming to draw it out, almost, before finishing with "Ama!", causing everyone to burst into cheers, Terra spinning Beast-Boy around in her arms like it was Dirty Dancing while Cyborg launched confetti from his shoulder, covering the living room in it. 

"This calls for celebration!" Robin declared, getting everyone's attention. "We've been trying to get more than two words out of him for two weeks now! Get changed, we're going for pizza!"

“Booo!” Terra called. “We’ve done pizza every night for the last week!”

And here, she climbed onto the back of the couch like James Morgan on a barrel of rum, preparing to make a speech. Terra was weirdly good at speeches (though nobody would go so far as to call them _inspirational_ ), and everyone geared up to listen to another good one.

“Pizza! Pizza! Every night, Pizza! We have to lay low, I understand that, my brothers and sisters, but we are not turtles! Robin is not a rat! We are not ninjas! We cannot subsist on pizza, video games, and sex alone!”

“Here, here!” Raven agreed.

“We need activity! We need inspiration! We need entertainment! We need to let our bodies rest, yes, but we must stimulate our minds!”

“Yeah, and my jaw is starting to hurt!” Beast Boy joked, earning a glare for the interruption.

“We need to get out of the house, stretch our legs, have some fun! Does Superman hide away in Metropolis, scraping out a living in the sewers? _No! _He rules that city with an iron fist! And I say, if we’re as good as Superman, why can’t we do the same? Why, if we can’t rule, can we at least not go out as we are, and be feared, but accepted?! Why don’t _we_ get a cool tower like the HIVE Academy?”__

__“A tower would be kinda cool…” Robin admitted, and it was a fair point. A Tower would be ridiculously cool._ _

__“And beyond all of this! Beyond the need to hide, beyond the lust we all feel in our hearts to see the sun, beyond all these things is one simple fact. I’m out of tampons…” she admitted, sitting down with a blush._ _

__After a beat of silence, Starfire raised her hand. “I am also out of the pads, and do not wish to use the tampons I know friend Raven possesses. The last time I did this, it vibrated most pleasantly, but was quite distracting.”_ _

__“That’s what happened to my bullet…” Raven mused, rather amused by the revelation._ _

__“Ok so do we wanna take over the city, or just go to Walmart?” Cyborg questioned. “I mean, I’m down for either, I need to get some new wrenches anyways.”_ _

__“If we’re leaving the base, we need to stop at the toy store, I need a new vibe anyways, thanks to Starfire,” Raven added._ _

__“Ok fine, let’s do both!” Robin agreed. “We go to Walmart, the porn shop, we stop for pizza, and _then_ we take over the city, got it?”_ _

__“I’m kinda feeling more like pasta,” Beast Boy admitted. “Could we go to Olive Garden instead?”_ _

__“Their breadsticks are delicious,” Robin conceded. “Fine! Walmart, porn store, Olive Garden, _then_ we take over the city!”_ _

__\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_ _

__“Can you _believe_ Olive Garden called the cops on us?” Raven groused, sitting on Derek’s back as he lazily did push ups with one hand. His other arm had been vaporized by some new weapon the police force had used, though it was swiftly growing back._ _

__“Yes” everyone else monotoned._ _

__“Ok fine, but still. We even had the money to pay our bill!”_ _

__“Until Fido chowed down on the maitre’d's liver for our food taking too long, we were doing great,” Terra groused, glaring at the wolf boy, who at least had the decency to look up at her with a grin before going back to his exercises.  
“It’s not our fault my poor baby got hungry, is it sweetie?” Raven cooed at Derek, who looked up at her with adoration, tail wagging._ _

__“Ok ok _legitimately none of this matters_ ” Beast Boy snapped at them both. “We all got fucking arrested. We’re literally in jail right now!”_ _

__Derek made a low, confused growl, and the other shapeshifter shook his head._ _

__“Nah, dude, they blocked our powers. It’s the collars.”_ _

__Again, Derek looked at him confused, letting Raven slide from his back as he stood. He scratched at his new collar with his one hand, then grinned at his teammates as he ripped it off, tossing the pieces to the ground._ _

__“Fff-ffuck thaat,” he grinned at them, snapping his shoulder forward and forcing his new arm to shoot forward, finishing the job in half a heartbeat. He reached over and tore Raven’s collar off, then grinned even wider._ _

__“Mmmama! Plan!” he barked, and Raven skimmed his surface thoughts before laughing at how ridiculous of a plan it was- ridiculous but effective was something the Titans could work with._ _

__“Good boy,” she smiled, before teleporting the rest of the team out of the cell before the guards could come charging in, guns blazing._ _

__Derek grinned, looking skyward for a brief moment as the guards took aim._ _

__“Think are brave… Can smell your fear… want live, leave now.” He warned them, and had any of the Titans been there to hear it, they’d have been shocked by the fact that he could speak in full sentences._ _

__And then he _blurred_ , lightning crackling off him as he moved, the guards firing on him as quickly as they could, only to fall, one by one. Some of them died well, by Derek’s approximation, firing to the last and refusing to give in. Some died like cowards, whimpering on the ground like worms. But all of them died screaming. Every last one of them, to the man, died screaming._ _

__When he left the room, he was greeted by the sight of a sickly looking man, rail thin and sitting in a wheelchair. This should have been easy, but Derek personally doubted it would be. The man had the bearing of a threat, even from that chair of his he was sitting in._ _

__“Master Al Ghul said you wouldn’t be contained that easily,” the man mused, his voice regulated by the modulator in his breathing tube. “You have the chance to go back into your kennel now, you know.”  
Even through the tube, he had a thick South American accent, though Derek didn't care to place it any further, just then. Besides, any further didn’t really matter. The man would be dead soon enough anyways, and the gods didn’t care where your accent was from._ _

__“Not happen” the wolf growled, and the man nodded._ _

__“I can respect that. We’re not so different, you and I. We were both intended to destroy a greater threat… but that similarity won’t aid you here, pup.”_ _

__He pressed a button on his wheelchair, and tubes on his back began to fill with a noxious green liquid. Derek watched, vaguely amused, as the man stood up, his muscles filling out, his size doubling, no, tripling! His muscles ballooned outwards, and he stepped forward, pulling his breathing tube from his throat and sliding a mask over his face._ _

__“My name is _Bane_ , boy. You will remember it. I was created to defeat _you_ , after all.”_ _

__That wasn't entirely true. Bane hadn't been created to fight anyone, he hadn’t been created at all. He’d been born in the worst prison known to man, and rescued at the age of eight. Eight years of Hell can twist a man, and Bane was certainly twisted by the experience. But freedom had come to him with his greatest creation, derived from the Lazarus pit beneath the prison. Venom was unstable, yes, and it had damned him, but it had given him freedom to fight back against the system that would have condemned him for daring to be born. It made him strong enough to go up against Gods and Monsters, and power like that always came at a cost. Even though he’d stabilized the formula over the years, he’d be dead within a decade._ _

__He intended to do something worthwhile in that limited time, though. A man could do a lot of good in a decade’s worth of time._ _

__Derek swung first, claws slicing through the air with a whistle, catching onto nothing even as Bane nailed him in the face with a still-growing fist. It was a war, in a way, Bane stronger but Derek faster, and neither one able to cause any permanent damage to the other. They went back and forth, like a tennis match, neither gaining anything like the upper hand over the other. Had Derek chosen to draw his sword, he might have won- but something ancient and instinctual in him said that it wouldn’t be fair to end the fight now. That instinctual voice told him, quite firmly, that this was meant to be, and that if he didn’t triumph with just his fists and fangs, he’d never truly triumph._ _

__“You’re quite good at this,” Bane complimented in an offhanded fashion, getting a shrug as Derek dodged another punch, only to fall into a knife hand strike as he did. The proto-lycan retaliated with a slash of his claws that caught Bane across the chest, though it healed nearly instantaneously._ _

__“Had nothing but time for practice,” the teen admitted, jumping up into the air to launch a series of spin kicks that Bane was forced to use both hands to block. He grabbed his foe by the ankle and _smashed him_ through a wall, then above his head and into the floor before tossing him away. It was a practical move, giving him time to breathe, while resting comfortably in the knowledge that Derek wouldn’t flee the fight anytime soon._ _

__“It shows, _mi amigo_. Most people I spar with cannot stand up to me.”_ _

__“Most people pussies,” Derek growled as he stepped back into the room, shaking off the drywall dust and forcing his shoulder back into the socket so it could finish healing properly. “I killing machine.”_ _

__Which was true. Pound for pound, death for death, Derek was the greatest killer on the planet. Superman could kill them quicker, The Flash could kill a thousand men in a minute, but Derek would outlast them. When Superman had seen his Kingdom Come, and The Flash had run his last race, Derek would still be standing and still be killing. He had the staying power of Eternity, and now that he was out of his ‘kennel’, he intended to show the world why letting him loose was the worst mistake it could have made. A death every day, and if the Titans wouldn’t grant him that, he would move on._ _

__“I know. That’s half the problem,” Bane mocked, tossing a chair that had miraculously survived their fight thus far. Derek blocked it and _moved_ , punching the air so hard that it broke the sound barrier and struck Bane in the chest, even across the room._ _

__Giving a grunt, Bane dropped, rolling through the rubble and letting himself rest for the briefest of moments._ _

__“Let us end this,” he snapped. “I am meant to get you back. You are meant to try and avoid that,” he said as he stood._ _

__“Fine,” Derek grunted, only to disappear a moment later, leaving a blinking and confused Bane behind._ _

__The muscular mercenary lifted his wrist to eye level, a hologram of his employer activating._ _

__“Did you succeed, Mr. Dorrance?”_ _

__“No. He ran to fight another day, Sir.”_ _

__“Pity. You’ll pursue?”  
“I would if I had been able to see the direction he fled. He’s faster than you told me… Stronger, as well. I’ll be feeling this fight for a few hours. I’ll need to go to my lab and create more of my Venom if I am to continue in your employ as more than a corpse.”_ _

__“Do so. I want him dead if you can do it, captured failing that.”_ _

__“Understood. I’ll do it, though it will take time.”_ _

__“We have precious little of that, but do what you can.”_ _

__The hologram blinked away, and Bane let himself relax, carrying his chair outside and sitting it down at the nearest bus stop. He donned his coat and let his Venom drain away, sitting in the chair as he shrank, his muscles atrophying away as the Venom faded. He hated being reliant on the chair, but he hated being reliant on Venom even moreso. The drug was tearing him apart, but it made him feel so good whilst doing so that sometimes all he wanted to do was let himself drown in the stuff. Overdose on the feeling of existing without pain and never hurt again._ _

__“One day, perhaps, but not today,” he mused to himself as the bus pulled up._ _


End file.
